The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism
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The War of all The PeoPle Also from Potomac Books Axis of Unity: Venezuela, Iran & the Threat to America —Sean Goforth The War of all The PeoPle The Nexus of Latin American Radicalism and Middle Eastern Terrorism Jon B. Perdue FoREwoRd by STEphEN JohNSoN Potomac Books Washington, D.C. Copyright © 2012 by Jon B. Perdue Published in the United States by Potomac Books, Inc. all rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Perdue, Jon B., 1967– The war of all the people : the nexus of latin american radicalism and Middle eastern terrorism / Jon B. Perdue ; foreword by Stephen Johnson. — 1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-59797-704-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-59797-803-3 (electronic) 1. radicalism—latin america. 2. latin america—Politics and government—1980– I. Title. hN110.5.Z9r365 2012 303.48’4--dc23 2012016051 Printed in the United States of america on acid-free paper that meets the american National Standards Institute Z39-48 Standard. Potomac Books 22841 Quicksilver Drive Dulles, Virginia 20166 first edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To my father, who taught me that effort, though not equal to talent, can still be its master Contents Foreword by Stephen Johnson ix Preface xiii Introduction 1 Part I. A Brief History of Terrorist Collaboration 1 Assessing the enemy 15 2 Checking the record 19 3 The Wolf at the Door 42 Part II. Joining the Two extremes 4 Revolution Makes Strange Bedfellows 59 5 The Transformation of Neo-Nazi Ideology 67 6 The Third Position 85 Part III. Step-by-Step Subversion 7 Slow-Motion revolution 97 8 Managing the Media 117 9 Managing the Masses 133 10 Managing the Military 140 11 Managing the Militias 152 12 Exporting the revolution 163 viii Contents Part IV. Gauging the Threat 13 The Threat to america’s “Soft Underbelly” 185 14 A Potential failed State Next Door 203 15 Venezuela: State Sponsor of Terrorism 209 16 The emerging Threats 214 Notes 223 Selected Bibliography 253 Index 255 About the author 263 Foreword The threats we face today are quite real. Suicide bombings in Pakistan, kidnappings in Colombia, and foiled terror plots more ambitious than the attacks of September 11, 2001, are evidence enough. Yet until they reach our shores, these threats remain largely in the mind of the beholder. What an analyst makes of them depends on connecting dots between the attitudes of states, the activities of suspected support networks, and the psychologies of individual actors. often a good bit of interpreta- tion is needed to bring relationships into focus to be able to predict how hostile intentions may result in a strike. There are plenty of ways for strategists and policymakers to go wrong. Con- centrating on vulnerabilities leads to a mind-set of constantly trying to fill gaps. frankly, there are too many weaknesses for that to be practical. Trend spotting is popular because experience teaches us that criminals and terrorists tend to be copy- cats. Yet that can lead in the wrong direction when dealing with creative adversaries. Predicting intentions through message and document analysis is useful up to a point, except that it is hard to know how seriously adversaries take their own words or whether they use them as cover for ulterior motives. Six years ago, Jorge Verstrynge’s guide to asymmetrical warfare, Peripheral Warfare and Revolutionary Islam: Origins, Rules and Ethics of Asymmetric Warfare, gained attention when it was distributed as a little booklet to members of Venezuela’s armed forces. Was it a battle plan or a diversion to make neighbors nervous? Then there is media reporting, which tends to market titillating information to a sensation-hungry public. often decision makers are forced to react to these media bursts, adding to the distortion that comes from paying too much attention to the ix x foreWorD obvious. for more than a decade, journalists and U.S. intelligence agencies alike have concentrated on reporting about the Middle east, because that is where the big stories are—to the neglect of hostile movements, terrorists, and criminals operat- ing much closer to home. The9/11 Commission Report chronicled public servants who went to extraordi- nary lengths to alert their agencies to glaring vulnerabilities and emerging threats, only to be dismissed or worn down by bureaucratic inertia. In the example of Co- lombia’s war on internal terror, the intelligence bonanza found on the computer hard drives seized in various raids on terrorist camps have already been thrown out of a Colombian court as inadmissible evidence, proving that shortsighted domestic politics and legal legerdemain can be as big an obstacle to thwarting terrorism as tactical variability. fortunately analysts such as Jon Perdue know that the solution to ineffective threat assessment is to use a big net to take in a lot of information, then examine motifs and draw conclusions in a historical context. It is the historical context that is often forgotten or overlooked, yet it can be the most reliable predictor when it is properly understood. one might argue with how Perdue connects the dots or dispute the interpreta- tions he draws from the evidence. even like-minded observers may do it differently, weighing some bits of evidence more than others. But the important thing is that historical analysis and the resulting decision making are taken into account and that reliable information gets presented. In security matters, ignorance is not bliss. at this point in the evolution of human progress, one might ask why the United States and its democratic neighbors in the Western hemisphere could have adver- saries. obviously the United States is a great power, and its success fuels resentment. Those countries that cling to archaic concepts of mercantilism and centralized rule necessarily misunderstand our concept of government of the people and the under- girding of the rule of law. Strides by others on the democratic path are similarly suspect and resented by those who mistakenly believe that such nations deny their heritage in order to align with what seems an alien way of governing. furthermore, not all countries that are advancing toward individual freedom and the rule of law have had time to move beyond simply holding elections in their democratic progress. freedom’s halting progress often fuels disappointment among some citizens who expected a more rapid rise and more immediate economic op- portunities. foreWorD xi To be sure, the history of the United States as an actor in the hemisphere is far from spotless, and adversaries tend to recall our mistakes far more than our policy triumphs. efforts to impose order or promote democracy have sometimes backfired, opening doors to dictatorship. But the power derived by latin america’s populists from blaming the United States for their unbroken record of failure has proven too strong to resist. What Perdue has done is to paint a detailed picture in the here and now of hostile actors and hostile external influences in the hemisphere. and more impor- tantly, he has done a much-needed study of the historical collaboration between the terrorist groups in latin america and those in the Middle east and eurasia— providing the reader with a historical context with which to more clearly analyze today’s threats. for the benefit of the reader, Perdue has painstakingly overturned lots of stones, and up close the picture isn’t pretty. —Stephen Johnson, director of the Americas Program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere affairs preface Irgenhausen Castrum, the ruins of a roman fort built at the end of the third cen- tury aD, lies at the top of a hill on the eastern shore of lake Pfäffikon, near Zurich, Switzerland. It was built during the reign of Diocletian to help defend rome’s border at the rhine from invaders. The fort’s significance lies in the vivid historical paral- lel that it represents of Samuel huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations” thesis, where the depth of the cultural chasm between rome and those who sought to conquer it can still be seen. at the time the fort was occupied, roman soldiers garrisoned inside its heated walls would have scoffed at the notion that those “ululating barbarians” camped in the freezing forests outside would ever challenge rome’s greatness. But it would take less than a century before the barbarians would rule the land, ripping the stones from the great facades and aqueducts, which they knew not how to maintain, to build their huts with the detritus of the fallen empire. as edward Gibbon hypothesized, despite its greatness and the quantum leap in human achievement and prosperity that it wrought, rome fell after being pushed— but it required little force to topple what had already been hollowed from within. rome fell when romans lost the desire and the ability to defend it. We have always looked to rome to try to extrapolate lessons from its downfall in order to prevent our own. free societies, or more specifically representative repub- lics, are the rare exception in human history. once established, they become the prin- cipal targets of external tyrants who must discredit them in order to retain power in their own forcibly obtained fiefdoms. xiii xiv PrefaCe The american republic has survived the buffeting winds of war and governmen- tal caprice to stand as the sole remaining superpower.